Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Dungeon finder Call to arms (failure)

Seeing as how I'm not the nicest guy in the world and have zero tolerance for fail players I suppose it's my turn to give my thoughts on this latest abomination made by blizz.

If you haven't heard about it yet, here's the lay down on this new feature that's going to ship with the coming patch. When there is a significant shortage of a certain role in the dungeon finder (only tanks obviously) a new icon will appear on the UI. This icon signifies that there is a call to arms for tanks to go do random dungeons. The tanks that que for a random, kill the last boss, and que for it ALONE will get a goodie bag. Remember that alone part, it's important later. Inside that goodie bag will be a random selection of either flasks, potions, gold, mini pets, and mounts dropped by any current dungeon boss. Sounds cool right?

Wrong.

The theory behind this piece of crap feature is to motivate tanks to que more often for randoms even after they did their one for the day. Here's the first problem I have with this. Remember when you were rewarded with 1800 honor points for winning a TB on attack? Do you remember what type of player that attracted? In the words of Gevlon, it was nothing more than a lightning rod for M&S. Free shit always draws the morons and slackers before it will ever attract somebody else. Blizzard is forgetting one flaw in their logic with this idea. They aren't going to motivate any tank to que more than they already are. A tank gets an instant que, that is MORE than enough reason to go do a dungeon, you get in there immediately when you get the notion to do so.

Also they're targeting the wrong crowd of course. They're not bribing a tank to do a dungeon, they're bribing them to do a dungeon with YOU. They have to go deal with the random selection of mouth breathing, fire standing, sheep dot'ing, oom healer pulling, inbred fuckwits that inhabit the random dungeons like maggots in a month old corpse of a tauren. This is the reason tanks don't que too often, it's not because there's so few. It's because they run with their friends or a full guild just to avoid this bullshit. That's the same reason I only que as a tank when me or my gf need to do a daily random and it's an hour before reset. See? I que for the instant group, not because I want to. Fuck no! The faster I can get in the faster I can leave.

If you ask me, blizz should just give a tank 150g for doing a random heroics and finishing the whole instance. They get the 150g every single time they complete an instance and not just once a day. Why do I say that? Because that is what me and countless others pay to hire a tank for the instant que. But that still wouldn't work and would in fact hurt things even more when you don't go with a group of decent players you already put together.

Why do I think this call to arms garbage is going to make randoms even worse? Simple, how often do you get a tank that is plain terrible? I don't mean the guy that has low aoe threat or the one that can't hold threat on a boss when you do 15k+ dps. I mean one that key board turns, clicks spells, has no idea what cc is, and doesn't know a thing about a single boss. I bet the answer is not that often. They're out there sure and we've all had to deal with them or drop group, but for the most part random tanks are tolerable.

Enter call to arms giving a reward of what is crack to the M&S, nothing useful. Now you have brostormlol the arms warrior in half pvp gear that has never tanked before. Enter worgenlol the paladin that puts on righteous fury and doesn't know what holy power is. Enter arthasdklol who hits blood presence and thinks they're a tank now. Don't think it won't happen.

DON'T THINK IT WON'T HAPPEN!

In all honesty I'm thinking that this so called "feature" will do nothing but make randoms even worse. The fact is that the vast majority of warcraft subscribers aren't just below average casual players. Those people I ahve nothign against at all. The vast majority are just terrible. Sucky. Fail. Noob. Mouth breathing powerdrooling fuckwit. Take your pick of words. They're bad and this will "motivate" them to tank. I'm reminded of the South Park episode where Cartman wants to become a Nascar driver. He's not a professional driver, but does it anyways. Lots of people get killed in the process. Arthasdklol and worgenlol want to tank for the goodie bags but are not actually tanks.

Lots of people get killed in the process.

Simply put yes you might get another 20 tanks per server doing 10 extra random instances. Sure that means that a hundred or so DPS get 2 minutes taken off their que time. But what's going to happen is they'll get stuck with arthasdklol or worgenlol or brostormlol and leave group because these people are such shit at tanking that they leave group and have to wait another 30 minutes in que. So instead of lowering the average que time it's probably gone up.

As unexpected from me as this might be, I agree with a lot of people out there who think that a few good tanks will come out of this. Me? Agreeable with anybody but myself?

Preposterous!

Ahem. No tanking is not hard. At all and if you say it is then you're either an absolutely amazing tank and know every teeny tiny bit to help you do your job or you're just more trash that competent players boost in randoms. I don't care if you agree because that's not an opinion, it is a fact. Doing the job of a tank in a 5 man is just as easy as doing dps on skull or spamming greater heal on one person and sometimes hit another 2-3 buttons. It's easy.

The problem is that not many people CAN dps only skull marked mobs. Not many people CAN hit their heal button when health goes lower. Not make people CAN hit an aoe ability when they pull. It isn't a fear of difficulty, but one of ability and responsibility. If a dps fails, not many will notice or care. If a tank fails it's obvious and you get raged at by everyone. The people that are convinced that they're awesome, but just need better gear (most of lfg) know they can't do it and don't want to seem less than incredible.

I'm sure there isn't a lack of jobs to clean toilets out in the world or to clean up after hours at some adult entertainment venues or hand over burgers at fast food joints. Why don't people do it even though it's easy? Because they don't want to. The fail players don't want to tank and will never amount to anything more than people that make you nerd rage but still have to carry on your back through your daily heroic.

So yes tanking is easy and that is not related to the shortage of them. The shortage of tanks is due to the abundance of failures. I used to tank but I stopped because I'm not going to carry anybody anymore. That's another tank that won't be doing chain randoms for a goodie bag. I wonder how many others are in the same group as me?

And as for the dps that are in tears saying "well we are getting screwed because we're dps." Shut the hell up. You lose nothing but que times.

Going to close with a quote from Gevlon on this topic which I feel sums this all up perfectly.

"The situation has a real-world version: underemployment and unemployment at the same time. There are lot of engineer, IT-specialist and medical doctor posts open. They have great salary offers. In the same time millions are unemployed. Why don't they take these well-paying jobs? Because they are unqualified, uneducated and often drunkards. If we would increase the salaries of IT specialists, could the no-high-school guy take it?"

It is not and never was an issue of desire or motivation, but one of ability. And not always the ability of the tank for that matter.

10 comments:

I have my doubts that Arthasdklol will enter the queue as a tank more than a few times. If people were occasionally cruel to him as a dps, he hasn't seen anything like what awaits him in his first LFD tank run. Bad tanks will stay away from LFD for many of the same reasons good tanks do.

I think there will be a surge of new tanks for a couple months (as there was after the introduction of DKs) and then we'll be right back where we are now.

I am a tank, always have been. I only run daily HC when my girlfriend asks me to or a full guild group assembles. I got tired of retards cursing at me because they got aggro when doing complete bullshit, ignoring marks etc. But what fucked with me most was those dickheads pulling for me all the time, aka "ogogogo"-filth.There is no chance whatsoever that I will queue up my sorry ass in LFD to be plagued by those morons again. No matter what they offer me.I farmed those mounts solo in the past and will do so in the future, listening to good music and enjoying the solitude and the absence of "ogogo"-filth.

I think in Patch 4.1 you can distinguish between heroic dungeons (itemlvl 333) and the new troll dungeons (itemlvl 346). So its a bit harder to get the requirements for the new two heroics.

There will be more bad tanks of course like worgenlol and a bit more good tanks in the random dungeon finder of course.I also think like Lujanera, that really bad tanks will no often tank because its hard for them and if they suck they could be kicked and wouldn't get a extra goody.

For myself, i'm tanking no more heroics, i need no more valorpoints for my defgear, why should i tank heros?

Spamming greater heal.. Haha. I wish. Sure assuming people cc and follow a kill order... But that never happens outside a guild run... Which btw never happens anymore. I will despise healing and probably Abandon it for atleast the first couple weeks after 4.1.

I'm looking forward to having some stuff that's only for folks who take advantage of this new feature. The pets will be nice. I'll probably Queue a bit more often, and I'm a very competent BDK tank.

This is just one more reason to continue grinding JP until I snag a full set of BoAs.

It's funny how you talk about tanking being easy and there not being a shortage of them, and use Gevlon's quote to allude to your feeling that folks don't tank because they're not skilled enough. Tanking is a mindset, and it requires a certain personality and set of developed character traits to be good at.

There is a shortage of tanks - everybody needs a random each day, and the fact that Queue times for dps are 45 minutes reflects that shortage. How you can claim to the contrary escapes me.

I do think you're right that most tanks tend to stick within their guild groups and don't run more than that.

But enough QQ. We can settle this once and for all - remove the deserter debuff from tanks, and watch what happens (hint: I'll still get my new pets/mount).

Untill you join the LFD where every DPS is HELLBENT on SABOTAGING your EVERY effort and ofthen the HEALERS TOO!!!! thats how I feel they play anyway... -they cant CC-they cant /assist -they cant target your target-they can not reapply CC-they can not stand behind the mob-they can not move out of the fire-they can not slow their DPS because they can not hear the sound of reason in their competition to show you with trumpets and fanfair how awesome their DPS is.

"OH!!! mahh bad, I did not see the fire""GAWSH, DUDE, i told you in party 3 time and then 3 more in wisper to move""DID YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF AWESOME... SEE MAHH DEEPS... I COULD NOT SEE OR HEAR OR READ YOUR WARNINGS OVER THE VOLUME OF THAT... NOW CELEBRATE ME AND MY EPIC FEAT OF 12k AND #1 DPS..."... ..."DUDE, WE WIPED... AT ONE PERCENT... Because the tank died, because the healer ran out of mana, because they were healing YOU MORE THAN THE TANK. Your 12K DPS does not mean anything""DID YOU HEAR THAT? #1 DPS... 12K DPS.. I am awesome... healer sucks, tanks sucks.. you fail."

@ StedeGenius idea with the deserter debuff. IMO that's the real problem here. If a DPS gets a crap tank, you either deal with 30 minutes of pain in the instance or 30 minutes of bordem in que. The insane wait time is punishment enough for a dps leaving a group early. The punishment is "you don't get to play the game how you want to for X minutes." I think that's plenty harsh enough of a deterrent, I know it is for me.

@ AchieveEven with the nightmarish dps that you talk about tanking is still not hard. CARRYING said fail dps is much harder. Running even a basic tank rotation and marking is not hard. Running in first is (obviously) not hard. In fact the only hard part about tanking in a 5m is knowing which way to go! But guess what. Asking is not hard either, and neither is asking google.

@ JinxI'll tank for you!

@ Anon (about gheal spam)The biggest issue with that is that if a tank wants to get these goodie bags, they have to go ALONE. If blizz let them take 1-2 people that wouldn't be a problem at all, but with that they're having to choose between helping friends and guildies to boosting lfg failbots for a chance at something nifty.

And you're right that basic 1 button healing only happens in guild groups of competent players. That's because they know wtf to do, your average lfd pug does not and likely never will.

The reason I don't tank randoms is not because it's hard or because of annoying/bad dps. It's because I'm lazy, and can't be bothered to learn every pull in every dungeon. Know which ones to mark for CC and skull, where to LoS, and all that BS. Sometimes that stuff is fun (trash-filled raids in BC were fun to tank), but often it's just a drag. For 70 VP it's not worth it.

As heals I can just tag along, spam heals when things go bad, and get out of the fire along with everyone else. No preparation required, no stress, and only one input to deal with -- shrinking health bars.

I'm actually kind of looking forward to this change, in combination with the two new heroics. It will certainly give me an incentive to strap the shield on if there aren't 4 guildies around.

Yep - it's DPS that's the most nasty thing in dungeons. They cause more headaches than the shit you're trying to kill and leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

I leveled a rogue to 85 - is it that hard to see your threat and move to another target, or see if the healer needs help and move in - is it really that tough if the tank is new, to give him/her a few seconds to get aggro? I understood my role and abilities as dps. But as a tank - apparently they are all worried about what recount says and not paying attention to what the hell is going on. Sometimes I'm patient - but sometimes if I see they're pulling for me, I say, you know I'm not interested in tanking for you and leave. I just cannot be bothered. You'd think they'd at least MAKE an effort.... given they have high wait times... *cough*..... you'd think....

About Me

This blog is about discovering all of the ways to make money in Rift. There are no cheats, hacks, or exploits used in any of my methods.
After amassing a 2 million gold fortune in wow I decided to come over to Rift and see how well I can do there. It is my belief that the game does not matter as much as the methods used and mine have already been proven to work and work well.